The Gaven

Well, everything is finally upgraded and working on the site.  Since a friend hosts the site, we had to move to a newer, faster, and better server.  The move itself went well.  The upgrade to the latest version of WordPress did not.  However, after many hours, everything was finally sorted.

I lost two categories, which I have to reset myself, and the photos disappeared, which I have to redo.  It’s an easy fix, just time consuming.  Most of the glitches are gone now, though one or two remain, which are being worked on and should be fixed in a few days.

I’ve sent out another round of letters, several of which have already come back.  Mostly, they tell me that I suck, but in a polite way.  Only one pissed me off.  It was from someone who wanted to read more than the first 50 pages, but then told me that none of the book was believable.  This person told me that none of the gadgets I included in the book were actually feasible and they would never be real.  This is despite the fact that every single thing I’ve written about the gadgets and vehicles are actual items that exist today.

After being pissed, I just shredded the letter and felt better.  There’s no point in staying angry over someone who doesn’t even want to see things that are possible in the future even if they already exist.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be upgrading the site and moving servers. If you can’t reach the site, just wait a few hours for the DNS to update and everything will be fine.

All of the letters I have sent out over the course of the past year have come back and all of them have been rejections.  I’ll have another go at sending stuff out in the next week or so, once work has slowed down enough to allow for some time to do so.

I’ve gotten a few rejection letters, so there’s not really good news on that front.  However, I am still plugging away and will continue to send out queries.  Someone out there will want to read more and maybe even publish it.

I’ve also been reading about some contests I could enter the manuscript into.  Again, this is not good news because the entry fees are $35-50, far too much for me at this point in time.  It will be at least another year before I could financially afford something like this.

That also leaves out any writer’s conferences.  There aren’t any nearby where I live and I can’t afford to travel to any of the ones I’d like to go to.  So, for the moment, I’m stuck on my ration of stamps and the always helpful email queries.

It has come to my attention that when people surf the About and Chapter One pages, as well as some of the categories, using the Internet Explorer or Opera browsers, that the side bar does not appear at the side, but at the end of the page. I use Firefox almost exclusively and have not experienced this problem myself.

I am looking through the code to try to figure this one out, but I’m not a programmer, so it might take a few days if I have to run and ask my programmer friends for help. Please bear with me until I get it all sorted out.

EDIT 1: 2:30pm I’ve discovered that the problem is a styling issue. I’m still working on it and hope to get it sorted later today.

EDIT 2: 5:47pm Well, the problem appears that the sidebar and footer div’s should be children of the wrapper div instead of the content div. Unfortunately, that means I cannot fix the problem myself. The Gaven is hosted on a friend’s server, who has generously given me the bandwidth for the site. Thus, I have no access to the server.  He is in The Netherlands and currently sleeping. Hopefully, we can get this fixed soon so stuff stops looking like crap.

Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors, has released his novel, American Gods, for free so that everyone can enjoy this great book. Coincidentally, I happen to have a copy in my hands right now that is half-way finished. I still haven’t read Stardust yet, and, now that they’ve turned it into a movie, I’ve got to hurry and read it before I see the movie.

Neil has complained this week about the fact that people don’t read just for pleasure anymore, so maybe, a free copy of his book will get them back into the joys of reading.

I apologize for not getting more updates out until now. There is a good reason, though.

At the end of January, I went to The Netherlands to attend the wedding of a very good friend of mine. I had a really good time and even got to stay in castle while I was there. I just wish that I could have stayed a little longer.

Unfortunately, when I returned, I got really sick with a stomach virus. I was sick for a week and, literally, lay on the couch all day unable to enjoy the usual fun of being sick, such as watching TV and surfing the Internet.

Despite the fact that I wrote the final words of The Gaven on June 20, 2007, I have yet to finish editing it.  I traveled halfway across the country for job interviews and then actually moved to Nebraska from New York.  It was a 28 hour drive and took two days, but I love driving so it was kind of fun.

Shortly after that, we had a horrible time with the movers (we’re still trying to sort that out), which ended up with us sleeping on the floor for nearly a month.  Of course, then I started my new job and, as most of you know, you’re so tired after being at work that you don’t want to do anything when you finally get home.

That left weekends only to edit.  I’m now working on my fifth time through the manuscript doing some final clean up and then I’m going to say it’s done.  There just comes a time where you have to let it go and stop nitpicking things to death.
So far, three colleagues have read The Gaven and helped me pick out a few typos that were left.  The intense scrutiny I gave the manuscript over the holidays is enough for a great final copy.

Well, folks, I’ve finally got the site up and running.  There was some problems with the mySQL database, then the php scripts didn’t want to work so we had to switch some stuff around and everything is finally working correctly.

I’ll be posting some more later today as the final tweaks are finished.